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Pitching your startup!

Founders usually are looking for advice and thoughts for pitching to VCs. Typically VCs look at hundreds of deals every month. Not every VC is looking at the same data or has similar preferences, making it even more complex to know what to cover in a pitch. While I’ve pitched only a few times, it occurred to me that I spend a lot of time listening and discussing pitches, so I should just put a piece about what VCs would like to hear!

You have around 5 minutes to grab the attention of VCs; so do not wait to tell about the most awesome part of your startup – team, market entry, technology etc. Tell it like a story. We need to know what problem you are solving and why you care about it. Tell us about your market. How big it is, how much can you address, how soon and who are the competitors? How will you have sustained differentiation against your competition? Who are your partners in crime, your team. Of all the things they could do in their lives, why this crazy thing? If you have launched, show us what you have done. Nothing like seeing product demo and hear customer testimonials. Have a clear ask, having clarity about what you want from an investor (how much are you raising, at what terms, introductions) tells a lot about your planning skills. One last key takeaway is to know your audience before pitching to them.